OG12-101 分析

清飞扬

花了一个小时，把曼哈顿的 RON（Director of Curriculum Development at Manhattan GMAT）的所有关于这道题的解释整理出来了。这道题真的非常的难，不过对于突破ones的用法,being的用法还有代词的使用的一些个知识点非常的有用，跟大家分享。

有底纹和中文字的一些总结都是我自己写的。仅仅是自己的理解所做的归纳。建议大家都看英文原版自己理解比较妥当

最后贴上下文的附件

wish you good luck on SC !!!

Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past,
makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.
(A) Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the
past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.
(B) An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well
in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.
(C) An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret
signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.
(D)Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past,
makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.
(E) Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past,
is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.

【A. Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear. 】

【句子结构】
* "heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action" is awkward and difficult to read. (you may have to be a native speaker to pick up on this, though)

much more importantly:
* makes it likely to miss...
this doesn't work.
technically, this would mean that "it" - an unspecified entity - is likely to miss the signs.
if you use the "it is ADJ..." construction, and the verb has a specific subject, you MUST include that subject in the construction. it is likely that the executive will miss...

【代词】

"it" seems ambiguous: commitment or course of action?

YES.
"it" is ambiguous here, for exactly the reasons you have outlined.

by the way, this is PRECISELY the reason why they chose to write "being heavily committed", rather than "heavy commitment", in the correct answer. see the discussion of that answer, below.

【B. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.】

【ones的使用】
"ones" MUST be used with some sort of qualifier or modifier; it cannot be used by itself.

for instance:
the black pants cost more than the brown ones --> this is ok, because "ones" is modified/qualified by "brown"
these pants cost more than the ones that this store sold last year --> this is also ok, because "ones" is modified/qualified by "that this store sold last year"
BUT
Lisa wears pants to work, but never wears ones when she goes out --> not ok. you'd just use "them" here.（这里的ones没有任何的modifier，仅仅是自己stand alone, 用法有点像是比较结构中的that，必须要有modifier来限制）

所以："misinterpreting ones" is wrong. this should be "them", not "ones".---这里的ones没有modifier来修饰，所以错误，应该用them


【句子结构—句义】

Quote:

B. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action ... makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.

i've eliminated the modifier in this sentence, simplifying its structure a bit.

once that modifier is eliminated, notice that you have a sentence that says that the executive him/herself makes missing the signs likely.
Changes the meaning. The fault here is transferred from commitment to the executive!---（逻辑意思的错误）


an executive...makes missing signs of incipient trouble...likely does not convey the intended meaning. It is not the EXECUTIVE himself but the COMMITMENT TO A COURSE OF ACTION that is causing the problems discussed in this SC. Eliminate B



【C. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.】

【代词】

JJ wrote:

the pronouns in C are just terribly vague

bad question if I may say so

i agree.

'it' is ambiguous and lacks a clear antecedent, because it could potentially refer either to 'course of action' (the intended antecedent) or to 'incipient trouble'. The nearest preceding singular noun is trouble, but the desired antecedent is course of action, which is placed too far from it. Eliminate C.

also note that grammatical parallelism doesn't help: both of those possible antecedents are objects of prepositions - neither is the subject of its own clause (which would thereby create parallelism with 'it', which is the subject of its clause).

uolaimi_007 wrote:

Thanks for discussion above. According to my observation in OG, I noticed that GMAT prefers pronoun being as close as possible to the noun. For choice C, logically speaking, the pronoun "it" here should refer to "a course of action" ( Grammar-wise, " a course of action is also the only singular form in this sentence). However, "it＂is too far away from the noun which "it" intended to modify. For this, I can easily rule out Choice C. Hope my humble opinion will lift a curtain of new perspective for you to interpret this question.

i'm not quite sure what you mean here, but if you are implying that pronouns automatically stand for whichever noun is closest to them, that is very, very wrong.

if the pronoun has multiple possible antecedents, a much more important factor is whether the pronoun is parallel to the intended noun.
for instance, if a pronoun serves as the subject of its clause, and there are two possible antecedents -- one that is the subject of its own clause, and one that is not -- then the pronoun will generally be taken to stand for the former, even if the former is much farther away.代词平行原则




【D. Executives’ being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or  misinterpreting them when they do appear】

【平行】

Quote:

the apostrophe is perhaps not needed. Also concerned with "being"

you missed what is easily the most important problem with this part: the blatant lack of parallelism between "miss" and "misinterpreting".
these two ideas are clearly parallel, and they're presented in tandem, so they have to have parallel grammatical structures.

【代词】
them cannot be used to refer to executives', which is not a noun but an adjective



【E. Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear】

【being的使用】

e is the best choice here. i cringe a bit at the use of 'being' - my first thought is that we could make the sentence better by using a noun, such as 'commitment' - but then you'd need some sort of possessive pronoun to show that it's the executive who's committed. in any case, (e) is definitely the best of the options here, none of which is perfect by any stretch

Jamie wrote:

Ron--
When is it okay for one to use "being"? could you please give me an example?
i have this sense of urgency to eliminate an ans choice with "being" in it :-(

please help!!!

thanks,
jamie

you're actually asking the wrong question; the question you should be asking is when you should eliminate "being".
the answer to that question is, ROUGHLY, that you should avoid "being" when expressing the IDENTITY or CHARACTERISTICS of some individual or thing. this is because "being" is usually unnecessary in such cases; there are simpler modifiers (such as appositives) that, while absolutely impossible to use in spoken language, are better in written language.
example:
being a cigar aficionado, john has strong opinions on when to use single-guillotine cigar cutters rather than double-guillotine cutters. --> bad.
a cigar aficionado, john has strong opinions on when to use single-guillotine cigar cutters rather than double-guillotine cutters. --> good. notice that we can simply omit the "being" here.

you don't want to omit "being" here, because it's not expressing identity: in the context of (e), it's a necessary verbal. (nice litmus test: try omitting it and see whether the sentence is still viable, perhaps with minor modifications. here, it isn't.)

so, to sum up:
if "being" expresses IDENTITY or CHARACTERISTICS, then kill it.
otherwise, evaluate it on the same merits as you would any other verb.

kudutta wrote:

Isn't "Being heavily committed to a course of action,....,an executive is likely to miss...." the correct usage?
I thought the phrase "Being heavily committed to a course of action.." should modify ""executives" but that does not seem to be the case with E.
Please explain.

Thanks.

ooooohhh ok

no, that's an incorrect analysis. in this case, "being" isn't a modifier; it's a gerund (= NOUN type -ing form).
in fact, "being committed" is the subject of this sentence!

i.e., here "being heavily committed"
is like
Swimming is fun.
that's a complete sentence -- "swimming" is a noun (gerund). since it's a noun, it's not modifying anything.

in fact, i don't think you're EVER going to see "being X" as a modifier, because, in any such case, you could simply eliminate "being" to produce a more concise sentence.
i.e.,
Being tired from the party, I fell asleep in less than one minute --> not ok
Tired from the party, I fell asleep in less than one minute --> ok

goelmohit2002 wrote:

Thanks a lot Ron !!!

Here the OA = E....which contains being....

but in general we read that being is in general wrong in GMAT...

Can you please tell how to find out when being is right and when being is wrong ?

as with most of the issues that come up a lot on the forum, this is a complicated issue.

here are a few pointers, though definitely short of a full treatment:

* in general, "being NOUN", "being ADJ" or "being a/an NOUN" will usually be suspicious.


* an important exception occurs when this sort of phrase is the actual SUBJECT of the sentence (as it is in this problem). i.e., if "being committed" is the subject, then there's really no other effective way to voice that idea.

- if this sort of thing is a MODIFIER, it will essentially never be correct, since in that case you can merely remove "being" and the modifier will still make sense.
for instance, if you have "being committed to his job, bob...", then that can be reduced to "committed to his job, bob..."

* "being VERBed" - i.e., PASSIVE VOICE construction - will be correct a lot of the time.

capnx wrote:

"Being committed..." is not modifying "executives"
"Being committed" is a gerund (noun phrase) functioning as the subject of the sentence: "Being committed... is likely to make..."

ie: Being late will get you in trouble.

yes. well done. "being committed..." is a gerund, and is the subject of the sentence.

in fact, i don't think you'll EVER see a modifier that starts with "being". if there were such a modifier, then you would pretty much always be able to shake off the "being" and just write the modifier without it.
e.g.
Being committed to his company, the executive worked long hours. --> incorrect
Committed to his company, the executive worked long hours. --> correct
there may be exceptions to this principle, but i can't think of any at the moment


归纳：being的使用
1.    如果being是做modifier（expressing the IDENTITY or CHARACTERISTICS of some individual or thing），比如"being NOUN", "being ADJ" or "being a/an NOUN"，则这个being是错误的，应该要省略，让句子变成NOUN/ADJ/(a/an NOUN), SVO
2.    如果being是做主语，则being就不能省略， 如：Being late will get you in trouble, 这个being late是做主语的，所以这题的
E) Being heavily committed to a course of action (subject) is （Verb） likely to xxx
是主语，所以不能省略，这个being的功能和swimming is fun中的swimming作用一样。主语不能省略，否则不成主语


【one的使用】

xyin wrote:

"especially one that has worked well in the past"

Does anyone fell the usage of one is weird?
"One" is supposed to stand for people, and we must use "who" rather than "that" to modify people.

Can anyone help me make it clear? Thanks!

this is not necessarily true.
it's true that “one” can stand for “an arbitrary person”, but “one” can also stand for “a particular instance of an aforementioned item/event/whatever”. one可以同时指代人和物，没有限定必须指代人，所以可以用that来修饰

Quote:

the present perfect can actually be used for a past action -- even one that does not continue to the present and that has no chance of ever recurring -- as long as that action is relevant to the present situation in some way.

in this example, “one” stands for “a past action”.

in the problem in this thread, “one” stands for “a course of action”.

--

Sunil:

Quote:

e.g. David took Mary to a flower shop and asked her to pick one.

nope -- you can't use “one” in this way unless the sentence actually mentions the thing that you are talking about.
in this context, “one” seems to mean one flower, or perhaps one bouquet of flowers -- but the sentence doesn't say either “flower(s)” or “bouquet(s) of flowers”, so it's incorrect.
if you interpret this sentence literally, then david is asking mary to pick an entire flower shop (because that's the only noun in the sentence to which “one” can refer).  这里的one没有先行词，所以不能用one来指代

direstraits007 wrote:

Ron,

In E, don't you think the usage "one that" is redundant...? I've seen this usage as a redundant usage in almost all the questions.

What is wrong with this [if we remove "one"]?: "Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear."

Thanks!

GeeMate.

you have "a course of action, especially X"
therefore X must be something that's parallel to "a course of action"
i.e., it must be a NOUN/PRONOUN, and it must represent a course of action.

here, "one" stands for "a course of action", so that's good.

if you remove "one", that parallelism is destroyed and you are left with a sentence that doesn't make sense.

Quote:

Thanks Ron!

But in some questions wherein I found the "one that" usage redundant are using the same concept which this question used. I mean to say like the above sentence falls apart if we remove "one" from it then can you give me some simple example sentence wherein removing "one" will not affect the sentence.

Thanks!

GeeMate.

whether you want "one" is going to depend on exactly what is being compared - i.e., on parallelism.

if you need "one" to maintain this parallelism, then you should include "one". if you don't need it, then don't use it.


[时态]

style.rohit007 wrote:

Ron..can u plz explain how the following part is correct.??

"especially one that has worked well in the past"

if the strategy worked well in the past then how can we use present perfect "Has worked" ??

the present perfect can actually be used for a past action -- even one that does not continue to the present and that has no chance of ever recurring -- as long as that action is relevant to the present situation in some way.这个行为，即便不是continue to the present，也能用现在完成时，只要和现在是“有关”

for instance:
i played high school football in the early to mid-1990s. obviously, i will never play high school football again; also, this action is distinctly in the past (since i graduated from high school almost twenty years ago). nevertheless, observe the following usages, both of which are correct:

(Talking to someone in a bar, in a situation that has nothing directly to do with high school football)
I played high school football.
here, the normal past tense is used, because this event is just presented as something that happened in the past, with no apparent connection to the present situation.
BUT
(At an interview for a coaching position in high school football)

I have played high school football, so I know what the players will experience.
here, the past perfect tense is used -- even though it's the same event in the same timeframe -- because the event is now directly relevant to the present timeframe

jellyfish233333

感谢分享！               

李凯程Dylan

太赞了，节省看原帖的时间

iiyy打酱油

顶楼主！               

Grace828

顶楼主！               

晓澜静荷

简直不能更赞！

gabrielpei

这一题就够反复琢磨好几天, 还要多翻出来重新看加深记忆啊!

besoru

好赞哦，正被这道题整晕了

justingz

大半年过去了，谈谈俺的看法吧。ABD多少有别扭可寻，我在CE中间纠结N久N久，持续中。
按考试时间每道题一分多钟，我觉得类似的题我还是可能会选C，结构看起来最正常。

C选项中，我想为it辩护一下，
1. signs of incipient trouble，signs在句中的作用压过incipient trouble，为复数，随后的when they也强调了这点，
2. trouble 怎能work well in the past,
所以，个人觉得，it没法指代incipient trouble，由此it指代a course of action并不为过，虽然远是远了点，但人家感情是在的。

另外，it也有指代an executive的嫌疑，从it和它的pronoun在句中所充当的成分平行的观点来看，莫非an executive就是传说中的小三？？？求指证！

E选项，being一出现我就想把它排除，不过后面的部分看起来也很舒服，没有东西墙互拆硬套在彼此之间那种感觉。

至于为啥正确答案为E，我只能用原句的语意说服自己，原意是commitment/being committed to a course of action 导致executive易犯错误，C则是强调executive为主犯，而E符合原意。

请大家多多批判C，多给点解释，让我从了E吧。

迷你太空人

感谢楼主